Final call for this year’s Vacaville Festival of Trees

The 30th annual Vacaville Festival of Trees is almost over, with Thursday as the last day to get in your bids for the beautifully-decorated Christmas trees.

Sales of the more than two dozen full-size and miniature trees, many with accompanying gifts, benefit Opportunity House, Vacaville’s lone homeless sheltering program.

Though fewer in number, organizers say the trees still reflect decorators’ amazing creativity and represent a variety of themes: traditional Christmas images of candy canes, tin soldiers and Santa, less traditional colors (think tie-dye and purple) and topics such as gnomes and tapestries, and characters including Black Panther and Dr. Seuss’ Grinch. One tree celebrates farms and farm animals.

Two take on COVID-19. And it wouldn’t be Festival without a tree (or two) celebrating Raiders football.

The trees can be viewed virtually at https://ohousefot.cbo.io, where each online description includes the address where the tree is on display.

In addition to placing bids online, the auction site provides a way to donate directly to Opportunity House while voting for a favorite tree.

Both the bidding and the voting will end at 8 p.m. Thursday. In addition to the tree auction, two other Festival traditions will continue in a revised format this year: the bake sale and the raffle.

Oppor tunit y House’s Cookies for a Cause will pick up the baking, offering a “Festival of Treets” menu that includes items most often purchased at the Festival: jumbo brownies and Rice Crispy treats, miniature pumpkin bread loaves, holiday cupcakes and bottles of Reindeer Root Beer.

Cookies for a Cause also will sell buckets containing three dozen ready-to-bake, frozen cookie dough balls in both classic and holiday flavors. Visit http://bit.ly/OHouseCookies or email orders to cookies@vsscorp.org. The annual Festival of Trees Raffle will end at 5 p.m. Thursday. View auction items, purchase tickets and enter drawings at Opportunity House’s Vacaville Thrift Store, 107 Peabody Road.

Proceeds from all Festival activities support the shelter, which, due to the pandemic, needs as much help as ever.

To join in the Virtual Vacaville Festival of Trees auction or to view the trees online, visit https://ohousefot.cbo.io.

For more information about Festival, visit www. vacavillefestivaloftrees.com, follow on Facebook at http://bit.ly/VacaFest and Twitter @VacavilleFoT, or email VacavilleFoT@gmail.com.